He was still gnashing his teeth to hold in the grimace of pain when she clasped her hands before her and smiled at Dara, every inch the calm collected, untouchable truthsayer.
"I have very much liked meeting you Dara," she said then nodded toward the Baralians which were watching them all with their usual feline curiosity. "I hope that we have a chance to talk later. For now I will leave you with your future Captain. I'm sure you have a great deal to talk about, and I must find Lara."
Sneaky little lie eater, he thought with no small amount of affection, despite the echoes of pain still stabbing at his spine.
"You really are perfect for us." He said that loud enough that everyone in the room heard it. Though he doubted the Baralians had missed any of their whispering with their heightened senses.
Trig stiffened and then blushed so prettily as she made her escape he knew she did not mistake his meaning. And he was fighting getting hard again just at the idea of chasing her down and finding out how far that blush covered. She was perfect for them. Him and Lore.
Even when he thought she might be working for a crazed megalomaniac out for the destruction of all he held dear he wanted her. The idea that he could not have her forever, that she was not who his gut told him she was to him had nearly killed him. The relief when Danika had told them she was innocent had nearly brought him to his knees faster than her nerve pinch had.
She had not forgiven him for that either. Though from the feelings coming through his link with Lore, Tyber was the only one still on her bad side. Who would have thought that Lore would be doing the better job at romance between the two of them? It boggled the mind.
She did not trust him, but then Tyber mused, he had the feeling that Trig Kelia trusted exactly no one. A lonely way to live. He would know. Before he was rescued by a slave and ended up linked permanently with him, he and Lore had been the same. Alone, suspicious of everyone and incapable of trust. Instead, what might have killed them, or driven them insane, had connected them in a way he would not now change even if he could. There was something to be said for knowing someone else will always be there to take your back, in a fight or otherwise. It went beyond family. Family could betray you, he knew that, and Lore had never had anything even remotely close to family. Not until the Jezebel and its small motley crew gave him a taste of it.
Now they would share a mate. And right now she neither liked nor trusted him for what he had done on the ship to alienate her. But then she didn’t understand how Lore's mating link worked or that it even existed. Since the first time he had stood in the same room as Lore and Trig he had known there was something there. And perhaps he should have handled things differently, but it was not in his nature to just lie down and accept fate without at least a little struggle against it.
Lore's strange mind would eventually link them all closer than three people could be, if that was not a cause for some careful thought and distance he did not know what was. The link between him and Lore had happened in a life or death instant. This he could see coming, and while he still had some reservations about letting another person so close, he could not deny the pull between them.
Nor could he deny that he wanted the little lie eater just as badly as Lore did. And the pretty Trig with her surprising knowledge and vast secrets had no earthly idea of what was coming. She might think she had a choice, but Tyber knew better. This thing between them had already started. It was no longer a matter of if she would mate them but when, and if she were paying more attention she would see it.
The bond between them had already started forming. He could feel it, and so would she if she but looked. For that to be the case she must have accepted it, at least subconsciously. He wondered how long it would take before she realized it. And how Trig would take the news of just how close the link between the three was going to be. Whatever her past, none of them would ever be alone again.
Dara had gone silent again while he watched Trig escape the garden. He looked from the long-gone figure of his mate to the child looking up at him so curiously and expectantly.
"What did you say?" he finally just asked, bringing his mind back to the here and now and away from ideas of chasing and claiming. If that nerve pinch was any indication, that training he had caught glimpses of on Lore's monitor were more than pretty stretching exercises or meditation. The woman would be dangerous if cornered. He would bet his ship on it.
Dara, he saw was quickly losing patience with him. She gave him an exasperated look only a small child could pull off. "Tell Kira you outrank her, and I don't need to go eat yet."
Tyber raised a brow at the child and then smiled at Kira before forcing his smile away and concentrating on the child. "We are not on my ship, and you are not crew yet. Here Kira outranks the both of us and if you cannot follow simple commands from a commanding officer, or obey the rules as they pertain to you, I am not sure you would be a good fit for the Jezebel. Now or in the future."
The widened eyes showed so much dismay Tyber had a hard time keeping his stern face on.
"I can follow the rules," she assured him with a devastated face and quivering chin raise that was nearly his undoing. "And I will do what I am told."
"Off you go then," he said keeping his brusque tone with an effort.
She turned as if her butt were on fire to chase over to Kira and take the shy woman's hand. The lady smiled down at the child and then graced him with a rare look of gratitude. He could well imagine how hard it was to keep such a rambunctious child in check. Especially when none of them had the heart to curtail her curiosity and spirit. Not when they all knew her beginnings. She might have stopped aging at an astronomical rate thanks to the medical files Jax and Tolan Lark had managed to steal from Warrung, and the treatment Doc had been able to create because of it. But none of them forgot the genetic tampering that had been done to her. One more time he was thankful Doc was a genius in hiding and had been with them.
But none of them forgot where she came from, and what had almost been her fate and what still could be if Warrung got his hands on her again. And Kira had a softer heart than most and had lived her own version of Cor Warrung abuse before she had come to PortSea. She stood no chance when Dara turned those big lavender eyes on her. Which was why when they finally left the garden, the Baralians were the ones herding the small females away.
Tyber found himself suddenly alone. Well, alone was relative when he felt the solid link between him and Lore that never went away, and now a new shimmer as well, a small barely there link that led from his mind to Trig Kelia to Lore that told him exactly were the female was and occasional glimpses of intense feeling. She was not as closed off to him as she had been even an hour before. The question now was how long before she realized it too, and how hard would she fight the inevitable when she did.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"Oh Kelia, there you are," Lara called from behind her. "I swear this place is a labyrinth. I know he did it on purpose to confuse any would be attackers, but it does not make finding the way easy for the people who live here."
Trig was relieved for more than one reason. Anyone but Tyber Relian would be a relief at the moment, plus she needed to find out what she had missed when she had her emotional fit and fled the room. And as Lara had said, the place was a maze of corridors and lifts that went unexpected places. She was, in a word, lost.
If she were not very, very careful with a charismatic Captain and his alluring first mate, it would be in more ways than one. "You can call me Trig, everyone else is, and I admit," Trig said with no small amount of relief. "I am extremely happy to see you."
Lara laughed and then as casually as if touch were no big deal she put her arm through Trig's and turned them both to head in the direction she had come from. "I don't know how much you heard before you stepped out," she said leading them both. "But when Malik turned the frigate upside down in his search for his missing truthsayer, and really you are going to have to tell me the story behind that one of these days, they found
something else."
Since Lara was looking as grim as she had ever seen the typically happy woman Trig forgot about the comfortable, yet unexpected feeling of touching another person and paid attention. And flat out ignored the reference to Malik and her history. Which was easy to do, as there wasn't all that much there anyway. "What did they find?"
"A bomb."
That had Trig stopping, dragging Lara to a stop with her as they were still attached. "A bomb?"
Lara nodded grimly. "They found an explosive device on my father's ship, and it led to the reveal of a traitor on his staff."
Trig was more than a little shocked by this. "I find that hard to believe." And not just because she would have sensed such dangerous secrets as a traitor and a bomb while she was on the ship. "Your father is an empath."
"That's what I said," Lara answered with emphatic agreement as she began dragging Trig again. "But apparently it was one of the lower ranked engine crew, someone my father rarely came into contact with himself.
Which would also explain how Trig might have missed it too. If there had been no contact between her and the person in question it could have escaped her notice, the traitor part at least, but a bomb? How had she not sensed that?
"According to what Malik was able to get out of the man, he had been a sort of sleeper agent for Warrung, and the plan had been to bring down the shield and cause a distraction so that you could be taken in the confusion. A waiting ship could take you and as a bonus they got to destroy my father’s frigate. While the man did not know much beyond his part of the plan, I would hazard a guess that Cor Warrung is a little unhappy about his recent losses and blames my father as well as the rest of us for his part in it."
"Your father specifically, or Alliance peacekeepers?"
Lara shook her head as they stopped at yet another lift and she hit a series of buttons before the doors swished open and they stepped inside. "From what I understand the Alliance has a long history of ignoring Warrung whenever possible. In fact my father has had more than one council "suggestion" that maybe starting a war would be counterproductive to the ideals of the Alliance. Apparently there is an unspoken agreement somewhere that Cor Warrung is left alone, and he in turn leaves the Alliance alone, or at least that was the gist. Malik and father were discussing the possibility that he is secretly paying or more likely threatening someone high up in the Alliance for his immunity agreement."
At those words Trigg felt a tingle in her spine and a wave of her gift coming over her that told her some dangerous knowledge was hers for the taking. She ignored it with an effort. Now was not the time to flex her power. Too many here had special senses of their own and look what had happened on the Jezebel with Tyber. She had a feeling Lucan Warrung would be ten times worse in both his suspicion and reaction.
Danika might be on her side, but Trig had no doubt that man would do a great deal she would not approve of if he felt her safety was in question.
"I tried to get my father and Malik to admit that it was a good thing they went looking for you, or a lot of people could have been hurt. But Malik just looked like he was chewing nails and pointed out that if we had let them know of the threat he would have done an entirely different sort of search and found the explosives, and the traitor, probably sooner. And you would have been safe." She waggled her brows at Trig and finished pointedly. "With him."
Trig ignored that and did her best to get the conversation pointed in the right direction. "Are they sure there was only one traitor?"
"No," Lara said right before the doors swished open and she led Trig out into yet another identical hall. "And that has Malik stewing you can be sure of it." She finally led them to a door. At first Trig thought they were going out into the same garden that she had left Tyber in, but this one was a little wilder, and there was no fishpond.
"We are all meeting for lunch in what Conall calls the 'semiprivate garden', as opposed to the private garden in the family courtyard, or the 'almost public garden' in the other courtyard where the fishpond is, to discuss everything. Don't be surprised if all the men try in subtle and not so subtle ways to get information out of you. Just tell what you feel comfortable telling and just give them your serene Kelia looks for the rest. They might try to push you around because they don't know you like Nori and I do, but they will catch on eventually."
She motioned with her hands as if she were wiping away the unimportance of Trig’s coming interrogation. "You be the tight lipped and calm Kelia we know and love and the rest of us will rein them in when they get too frustrated about it all."
"That speech," Kelia said as she caught sight of the long food laden table and the plethora of scary individuals that waited for them. “Was not as reassuring as you think it was."
Lara just laughed, leading her to the table and her seat, which was right between Lore and Tyber Relian and across from Conall Barnos. The Fire must have returned because besides Lucan and Danika she saw Tolan Lark, who she nodded to, since she had met him briefly when he had helped rescue her so long ago with Nori and Lara
Beside him was a Denarian that had to be his mate, the tech whisperer, Jax. Like most of her kind she was willowy, golden, and fragile looking. She had a magical essence about her that reminded Trig of flowers and moonlight. Denarians derived their powers from their mother planet so the nature power surrounding her was expected. It also made Nori wonder how she managed to be a tech whisperer when their whole society was allergic to technology and man-made metals. Then she saw the woman’s tricolored topaz, gold and purple eyes and was even more surprised. A royal Dainaree who not only worked and mated off world but worked in tech? Inconceivable.
She locked her power down tight when it started to shift under her curiosity. Like most of the people Trig had met on PortSea the woman moved like a predator and swirled with secrets best left alone. Menelaus, she also nodded at. He bowed back at her briefly from his guard post over Nori’s chair.
Tuft stood behind and to the left of Lucan and Danika as if he too was standing guard. Tuft, she had discovered, did not speak much. So all she really knew about him was that he worked security and could probably kill with his pinky finger.
Around this table of beautiful dangerous people there swirled a veritable cloud of secret knowledge she could almost taste. If she thought she had been tempted in the past it was nothing to this. She was almost ill with the need pounding her to release her powers.
Then the blue flying beings swooped in and surrounded Danika in a cloud of power and peace that had Trig staring stupidly while everyone else acted like it was a common occurrence.
Maybe for them it was, but as well travelled as she was, it was still something to see. When the small winged points of light finally flittered away to circle the table they left a laughing Danika behind covered in even more and brighter glowing crystal pearls. They were so bright with power they nearly blinded Trig when she looked too long at them.
Trig had noticed her jewelry before in passing, noticed too that Jax wore some as well braided into her hair, even though she wore it with clearly lived in ship standard. In her simple sarong Danika’s display should also have looked out of place, but somehow it worked.
Trig had never cared for crystal pearls when she had seen them among the rich in her travels. Cold and colorless she had always wondered that they sold for the amount of credits that they did. But here they were alive and bright with power. The sight reminded her that one of Lucan Warrung’s many legal exports was crystal pearls, said to be found only in the seas around his home.
Now having seen where it came from Trig was reminded that the beautiful jewelry that she had always thought of as cold and lifeless lived here where it was created, and she finally understood the draw.
The Furgarians circled the table even as she watched. Awed by them and the almost pure power that surrounded them she was unprepared when, almost as one cloud of thought, the creatures turned their attention wholly to Trig where she had frozen at her appointed spot bet
ween Tyber and Lore.
The two men had moved closer to her while she was distracted, and she was oddly comforted by their presence. Why they would cause her to have such feelings when she did not trust them she did not have time to question before the mass of blue wings enveloped the three of them in a cloud of power and warmth.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Furgarians, to Lucan's knowledge had only every reacted in such a way with Dannika, and to a lesser extent Jax. That they would surround the new truthsayer as they were spoke of not just the woman's hidden depths of power, but also her intentions. The Furgarians could read a person beyond what could be seen by most. And they would not get near anyone they did not like.
Whatever else Trig Kelia was, she would bring no harm, he could not doubt that now. Not with Danika, Lara, High Ambassador Tryne and the Furgarians all trusting her.
Lucan should have been reassured, but even Jax had not been swarmed in this way. Before today he had never seen anyone get the reaction the truthsayer was getting but Danika. What kind of power was the woman hiding behind her serene shields to cause such a reaction?
He knew what his mate was capable of, but he had no idea what this woman could do, and he needed to know, no matter what Danika thought. They were essentially at war. He needed to know what his weapons could do before the battle, and he would find out.
Equally interesting was that the Furgarians had always ignored Relian and his strange first mate before today. Now while it was clear they were swarming the female; the males were not immune to the attention she was getting. When the blue fluttering horde finally backed away from the female and the two males that hovered so protectively over her, Trig Kelia was nearly as covered in crystal pearls as Dannika always was, and Tyber Relian and his usually austere first mate both had more than one strand connecting them to her. It was in a word, comical, the look of shock on their faces, or at least it would be if it did not raise so many questions in his mind.
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